Uniti, a two-seater micro electric vehicle with a battery range of around 90 miles, is expected to cost £17,500 when it launches in 2019.
Photograph: Uniti

Imagine a city street filled with two-seater electric vehicles (EVs) zipping around. A Swedish startup claims these smaller, lighter EVs could help cut congestion and toxic levels of air pollution.

Uniti, which crowdfunded €1.2m (£1m) to develop the prototype of its EV, has already managed to capture the attention of Siemens. The two companies recently announced a partnership which will allow the car’s entire production process to be planned in a virtual setting before implementing it in the real world.

The ultimate goal is to produce around 50,000 cars per year in a fully automated production facility in Sweden, with the first deliveries scheduled for 2019 and expected to cost £17,500 each – a figure that is likely to limit its success.

The Renault Twizy, another micro EV that costs £6,995 (excluding the monthly £45 battery hire charge), has sold 19,589 units since its launch in 2012.

“Mostly they are too expensive,” says Dr Peter Harrop, chair of IDTechEx and co-author of a report on the micro EV market. “But China and Taiwan will get the price down, and others are adding innovation to make them more attractive.”

Why buy a micro electric vehicle?

Micro EVs are much smaller and lighter than standard EVs like the Chevrolet Bolt, Tesla Model S and Nissan Leaf. Uniti, for example, weighs 400kg and comes with a 11 or 20 kWh battery.

However, standard EVs’ bigger batteries allow for longer ranges; the entry-level Tesla Model S 60, which costs from £66,500, can manage just over 200 miles between charges, compared to an estimated 93 miles for Uniti’s two-seater EV.

Nevertheless, Uniti’s range is ideal for city driving, says Lewis Horne, the company’s CEO. He feels the smaller battery, compact size and carbon fibre and bio-composite body also make it more environmentally friendly than EVs that cleave to traditional car designs.

“If we make electric cars in the exact same way we’ve made cars for the last hundred years – big steel frame structure, remove the combustion engine and replace it with an oversized and overpowered electric powertrain – that’s problematic,” he says.

“A 90 kWh lithium iron battery that’s used to carry around one human occupant is not sustainable.”

Eli Zero, a two-seater micro EV with a top speed of 25 mph, is due to launch in January 2018 for around £8,000. Photograph: Eli

Solar cars for the city

As well as the Twizy and standard EVs, Uniti faces competition from the Sion Urban, an upcoming EV with integrated solar cells that can recharge its battery from the sun, and the Eli Zero, a two-seater micro EV with a top speed of 25 mph, which is due to launch in January 2018 for around £8,000.

Eli, the startup behind the car, envisions a future where low speed personal vehicles are used for central travel within cities, and high speed autonomous car-sharing services cater for journeys over longer distances.

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Shaina Denny, head of marketing at Eli, says the Smart car, which launched in 1998, has helped pave the way for micro EVs. “When Smart came along, they spent millions of marketing dollars showing people that they can accept a small car, and [...] people are now a lot more open minded than they were even a few years ago.”

Although Tesla has shown that it’s possible for a new company to shake up the car industry, Tim Schwanen, director of the Transport Studies Unit at the University of Oxford, believes micro EV startups like Uniti and Eli still face a tough road ahead.

“The car industry [...] is a sector that has extremely high entry barriers. It’s very difficult for new entrants to gain a foothold,” he says, adding that big players like Nissan and Renault “have a whole apparatus of marketing, distribution, maintenance and expertise behind them that these new companies really lack”.

That might explain why the micro EV market has already experienced at least one false start – MIT’s CityCar, selected as one of the best inventions of 2007 by Time magazine, never made it out of the prototype stage.

In the long-run, says Schwanen, “popularisation of these micro EVs will depend to a substantial degree on the role of policy”. Governments could introduce parking exemptions to encourage people to purchase one, for example, though he feels the vehicles may be better suited to car sharing schemes and private fleets than individual ownership.